Chata and Chinita: A Novel

by Laura Preston

This last question Pedro answered by sending by the first woman who went to the next village for a wonderful flowered muslin, in which to her immense delight Chinita for a day glittered like a rainbow, but which the dust and grime soon reduced to a level with the more sombre tatters in which she usually appeared. When these were at their worst, Doña Feliz sometimes stopped a moment to look at her and throw a reproving glance at Pedro; but she never spoke to him of the child either for good or ill.

One day, however,—it was the day, they remembered afterward, on which the Padre Francisco celebrated Mass for the last time,—the two little girls accompanied by their mother and followed by their nurse went to the church in new frocks of deep purple, most wonderful to see. Chinita could not keep her eyes off them, though Rosario frowned majestically, drawing her black eyebrows together and even slyly shaking a finger half covered with little rings of tinsel and bright-colored stones. But the other child, the little Chata, covertly smiled at her as she half guiltily turned her gaze from the saint before whose shrine she was kneeling; and that smile had so much of kindliness, curiosity, invitation in it that Chinita on the instant formed a desperate resolution, and determined at once to carry it through.

Now, it had happened that from her earliest infancy Pedro had forbidden her to be taken, or later to go, into the court upon which the apartments of the administrador opened. Everywhere else,—even into the stables where the horses and mules, for all Pedro’s confidence, might have kicked or trodden her; to the courtyard where the duck-pond was; to the kitchen, where more than once she had stumbled over a pot of boiling black beans—anywhere, everywhere, might she go except to the small court which lay just back of the principal and most extensive one. How often had Chinita crossed the first, and in the very act of peeping through the doorway of the second had been snatched back by Pedro and carried kicking and screaming, tugging at his black hair and beard, back to the snake-hung vestibule to be terrified by some grim tale into submission; or on occasion had even been shut up in the hut to nurse Florencia’s baby,—if nursing it could be called, where the heavy, fat lump of infant mortality was set upon the ragged skirt of the other rebellious infant, to pin her to her mother earth. Florencia perhaps resented this mode of punishment more than either of the victims, for they began with screams and generally ended by amicably falling asleep,—the straight coarse locks of the little Indian mingling with the brown curls, still tinged with gold and reddened at the tips by the sun, of the fairer-skinned girl.

Upon this day, Chinita in her small mind resolved there should be no loitering at the doorway; and scarcely had the two demure little maidens passed into the inner court and followed their mother up the stairway, when she darted in and looked eagerly around. There was nothing terrible there at all,—an open door upon the lower floor showing the brick floor of a dining-room, where a long table set for a meal stood, and a boy was moving about in sandalled feet making ready for the mid-day dinner. There was a great earthen jar of water sunk a little in the floor of a far corner, and some chairs scattered about. A picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, under which was a small vessel of holy water, met her eyes as she glanced in. She turned away disappointed and went to another door, that of a sitting-room, as bare and uninviting as the dining-room, but with an altar at one end, above which stood a figure of Mary with the infant Jesus in her arms. Even the saints in the church were not so gorgeous as this. Chinita gazed in admiration and delight; if she could have taken the waxen babe from the mother’s arms she would have sat down then and there in utter absorption and forgetfulness. As it was, she crossed herself and ran out among the flower-pots in the courtyard and anxiously looked up. Yes, there leaning over the railings of the corridor were those she sought. At sight of her Rosario screamed with delight, her budding aristocratic scruples yielding at once to the charms of novelty. Chata waved her hand and smiled, both running eagerly to descend the stairs and grasp their new play-fellow.

“What is your name?” asked both in a breath. “Why are you always with Pedro, at the gate? Who is your mother, and why have you got such funny hair? Who combs it for you? Doesn’t it hurt?”

Chinita answered this last question with a rueful grimace, at the same time putting one dirty little finger on Rosario’s coral necklace,—a liberty which that damsel resented with a sharp slap, which was instantly returned with interest, much to Rosario’s surprise and Chata’s dismay.

At the cry which Rosario uttered, following it up with sobs and lamentations, both Doña Feliz and Doña Rita appeared. Rosario flew to her mother. “Oh, the naughty cat! the bad, wicked girl! she scratched me! she slapped me!” she cried, between her sobs.

Chata followed her sister, still keeping Chinita’s hand, which she had caught in the fray. “Poor Rosario! poor little sister,” she said pityingly; “but, Mamacita, just look where Rosa slapped the poor pretty Chinita,” and she softly smoothed the cheek which Chinita sullenly strove to turn away.

“Why, it is that wretched little foundling of Pedro’s!” cried Doña Rita, indignantly, as she wiped Rosario’s streaming cheeks. “Get you gone, you fierce little tigress! Chata, let go her hand; she will scratch you, she may bite you next.”

“Oh, no,” cooed Chata, quite in the ear of the ragged little fury beside her; while Doña Feliz, who had been silent, placed her fingers under the chin of the little waif, and lifted her face to her gaze. “Be not angry at a children’s quarrel,” she said; “they will be all the better friends for it later.”